The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917

Chapter 3

in which Jews go on the war path: Mikhail Gotz and Gregory Gershuni create the most powerful opposition party in Russia

NEW YEAR WISHES

On 31 December 1900, the twenty-nine-year-old pharmacist Gregory Gershuni from Minsk (today the capital of Belarus) holds a New Year’s Eve party. “Comrade Dmitry” (Gershuni’s nickname) invites his friends, who happen to be revolutionaries. Gershuni’s neighbor, the fifty-six-year-old Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, nicknamed Babushka, a legendary dissident of the previous generation, also looks in.

Babushka is a figure of authority for everyone at the party. During an argument about whether revolutionaries should adopt terror tactics like before, Gershuni asks Babushka for her opinion. Her answer surprises many: “We, too, were once tormented by this question and spoke the Biblical words: ‘Father, let this cup pass me by.’ We stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back. Once again, terror is the only option.” Gershuni is one of the few in agreement. It is time to start killing again.

At the end of the high-spirited party, Babushka takes “Comrade Dmitry” to one side and says: “Keep control of your thoughts. Do you want to end up at the Peter and Paul Fortress or doing hard labour? Change your passport, go underground. Now!”

After this conversation Babushka leaves Minsk forever. She has restless feet. For many years now she has been traveling around the Russian Empire under false documents.

NOT MY CUP OF TEA

A few weeks later, in late January, a young affluent Jew boards a train in Odessa bound for Paris. He is thirty-six years old and one of the most renowned people in the city. He is the heir to a wealthy Russian dynasty of tea producers and the highly efficient manager of the family’s Odessa branch. His name is Mikhail Gotz.

Mikhail was born in Moscow, where the rich include not only Old Believers, but also Jews. The tea market is controlled by David Wissotzky and his brother-in-law Raphael Gotz. The business climate for Jews is even tougher than for Old Believers, but Wissotzky and Gotz do very well. At the turn of the twentieth century, their company has a market capitalization of 10 million roubles and an annual turnover of 45 million roubles.^* Branches are opened in New York and London a few years later.

Wissotzky and Gotz are the most prominent Jewish figures in the Russian Empire. But as in the case of the Old Believers, the “golden youth”—the third generation of Moscow billionaires—has fallen short of its forebears’ expectations. Mikhail Gotz, Wissotzky’s nephew and Raphael Gotz’s son, is not into business or even the theatre (like Morozov and Mamontov). In 1884, at the age of eighteen, he joins the underground revolutionary circle. The group holds its secret meetings at a library run by Gotz’s former classmate Sergei Zubatov. In 1886, the library is raided by police, after which Gotz is exiled to Siberia for ten years and barely survives. But that is in the past. Barred from the Russian capital, the “tea heir” is now running the family business in Odessa.

His health weakened by hard labor in Siberia, his family has decided to send him to Paris for treatment. But the patient has other plans. He wants to make the acquaintance of his idol, the legendary revolutionary Pyotr Lavrov, but news arrives from the French capital of his recent demise. Now Gotz can only attend the funeral—and arrives late.

Lavrov’s funeral turns into a congress of Narodniks—a once mighty movement that in the latter half of the nineteenth century did battle with the Russian Empire. Back then, members of the intelligentsia considered it their sacred duty to “go to the people” and inform the uneducated classes, primarily the peasants, of their rights and foment revolution among them. They told the peasants about the imminent “black repartition”—the cherished day when all the land would be taken from the nobles and distributed to the people. The Narodniks (or populists) set up circles in the capital and provinces. They were the first to use political terror as a weapon. The assassins of Alexander II were bound up in a powerful secret organization called Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), and the Narodnik circles were home to the leading lights of the Russian “non-systemic opposition”^* of the nineteenth century.

But during the reign of Alexander III, the Narodnik movement begins to decline. All terrorist groups are destroyed, and the peasants remain unmoved by the populist propaganda. The remaining Narodniks cultivate the “theory of small deeds”—the idea that helping out locally as teachers and doctors will improve the lives of ordinary people. The Narodniks curtail their political activity, and the movement’s leaders emigrate abroad. The only exception is Babushka. Having spent a third of her life in prison and exile, she is amnestied in honor of the coronation of Nicholas II and now travels in rural areas, campaigning on behalf of the peasantry. Almost nothing is left of the once-formidable People’s Will. By the early twentieth century the underground circles are scattered and barely in contact with each other.

Once in Paris, Gotz gets acquainted with the resident Narodniks. Welcomed as an affluent and influential member, he yearns to unite the underground circles of Russian revolutionaries and breathe new life into the withering opposition. Gotz’s Paris apartment turns into a rendezvous point for Narodniks of all ages. After almost a year in the French capital, he chucks in the family business, despite limited revolutionary success.

In Minsk, in June 1900, police round-ups are in full swing. The underground printing press and local revolutionary cell are uncovered. Its leader, pharmacist Gregory Gershuni, is arrested and sent to Moscow for questioning by Sergei Zubatov, the head of the Moscow secret police.

Zubatov begins a cat-and-mouse game with the detainee, whose proven links to Babushka are enough to send Gershuni to Siberia. But Zubatov takes a deeper interest in this young revolutionary and decides to reform him.

The thirty-six-year-old Zubatov has his own method of dealing with “politicals.” More preacher than detective, he is a romantic in uniform.

As a child, Zubatov is fond of the idea of revolution and even set up his own group at school. But in year seven his father finds out about his passion and removes him from the school. The well-read youngster takes a job at a library where he discovers a vast number of prohibited books in the vaults. He hands them out to readers, unwittingly turning his library into a center of underground activity. Among the readers are young revolutionaries, including the tea heir Mikhail Gotz. They become friends and, according to Gotz, Zubatov takes a serious interest in Gotz’s circle. One day the police arrive for Zubatov. During the first interrogation, he learns that his “friends” have been using his library for clandestine revolutionary meetings of which he was unaware (or so he claims). It does not take long for him to agree to work as a police informant.

With the help of the new secret agent Zubatov, the police arrest, try, and exile many revolutionaries, including Gotz. Wanted by the revolutionaries as an agent provocateur, Zubatov is forced out of the underworld and into a career as a regular police officer. After seven years, he is promoted to chief of the Moscow secret police.

Now an ideological statist, Zubatov loves to deliver long sermons to his subordinates: “Without the tsar there is no Russia.^* The prosperity and greatness of Russia come from her sovereigns. It will be ever thus. Opponents of the monarchy are opponents of Russia. The struggle against them is a matter of life and, even more so, death.”

After every group arrest, Zubatov spends a long time talking to the detainees who interest him. It is less an interrogation and more a conversation over tea about the ills of revolution and the road to destruction. During these tête-à-têtes, Zubatov invites his interlocutors to assist the government in the fight against the revolution. Some agree. Others, flummoxed by Zubatov’s approach, simply renounce their revolutionary activity.

Zubatov offers Gershuni a deal. In exchange for abandoning the revolution, he will be allowed to sign a deposition stating that he is not a member of any secret organization, but simply in despair at the harassment of the Jews. Gershuni pretends to agree. The unwritten revolutionary “code of conduct” prohibits such cowardice, but Gershuni decides to play Zubatov’s game. He signs everything that is put in front of him. Zubatov believes that Gershuni is broken and will never return to his revolutionary ways, and although the young pharmacist does not become a collaborator, he is allowed to go home to Minsk.

Zubatov is mistaken. Far from abandoning his revolutionary plans on being released, Gershuni reactivates them. As advised by Babushka, he acquires false papers and goes to Paris, where most of his fellow revolutionaries are based. There he meets Mikhail Gotz.

Gotz and Gershuni have lots to talk about, not least their mutual acquaintance Sergei Zubatov. Zubatov played a decisive role in Gotz’s fate when in 1888 he shopped the latter’s clandestine circle to the police. The trial lasts for several years. The young metropolitan intellectuals who had gathered in the library to read prohibited works of literature and hold spirited discussions—and nothing more—are all sentenced to ten years’ exile in Kolyma.

Sent from Moscow in May 1889, the exiles arrive at Yakutsk (five thousand kilometers from Moscow, but still three thousand kilometers from Kolyma) only in November. There they wait out the winter before the long slog to the settlement of Srednekolymsk in northeast Siberia.

In March, with the ground still covered in snow, the exiles are informed that it is time to move on. The two-month walk in temperatures of minus fifty degrees Celsius is the equivalent of a death sentence, so as a last resort they decide to write to the local governor, begging to postpone their departure.

On 21 March the twenty-five exiled revolutionaries take the letter to the local police department in Yakutsk, where they are given an address at which they are to meet the following day at 11 a.m. to receive a reply. Suspicious, the revolutionaries amass all the weapons they can: ten revolvers and a rifle (security seems to have been rather lax).

Come the appointed hour, the building is surrounded by soldiers and a gunfight breaks out. One officer is injured and six exiles are killed on the spot. Four other revolutionaries are hurt, including Gotz, who has been shot through the lung.

Following a court hearing in Yakutsk, all the insurgents (including the few women among their number) are sentenced to death. The judge subsequently mitigates the punishment for those who did not fire at the police. As a result, three are hanged and the rest are given hard labor.

The badly wounded Mikhail Gotz is expected not to survive, but he eventually recovers and is duly sent to the labor camp.

Despite the remoteness of Yakutsk, the uprising makes the news. Among those who hear about it is the American journalist George Kennan. In 1891, after a trip to Russia, he writes a series of articles about political prisoners in Russia, followed by the book Siberia and the Exile System, in which the Yakutsk rebellion features prominently. Western society is shocked by the revelations in the book, and the British parliament even sends an official request to Saint Petersburg for information about the incident.

Other political prisoners in Yakutsk express support for the uprising, but Gotz is unimpressed: “Enough about victims!” he says. “We should have rebelled properly or not at all. By ‘properly’ I mean kill the person to blame for the massacre, the governor of Yakutsk.”

But after the death of Alexander III, the hard labor is annulled in 1894, and the revolutionaries only have to see out their original sentences handed down after Zubatov’s denunciation. In 1898 Gotz is set free and heads for the fourth-largest city in the empire, the port capital of Odessa, to take charge of the family company’s local operations.

The affluent heir Gotz, who has spent a third of his life in Siberia, and the humble pharmacist Gershuni, who escaped exile thanks to a deal with Zubatov, unexpectedly find a common language. Their meetings in Paris mark the start of a new era in Russian political history. They revive the spirit of People’s Will under a new name—the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. Over the next two decades the socialist revolutionaries (SRs) become the main enemy of the tsarist regime.

THE JEWISH THREAT

In 1900, the authorities do not consider the Narodniks particularly dangerous. The same cannot be said for the Bund—the first underground political party of Russia in the twentieth century. The full title of this influential organization, translated from Yiddish, is the General Jewish Labor Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

In the late 1890s the Jews are the most politically active people in the world. A turning point in the lives of many European Jews is the case of Alfred Dreyfus—a lawsuit against a French army officer accused of spying for Germany. In December 1894 Captain Dreyfus is found guilty and sentenced to exile for life. But that is only the beginning of the story: over the next five years the entire European intellectual elite hold fierce debates about whether Dreyfus is guilty or not. All the French military (together with all the anti-Semites in Europe) have no doubt, while all the French socialists argue that he is a victim. The most ardent champions of Dreyfus are the leader of the French left Jean Jaurès and the writer Émile Zola, who in January 1898 writes a famous article entitled “J’accuse.” In it, he asserts that the real spy is not the Jewish Dreyfus, but Major Charles Esterhazy, a Frenchman of Hungarian origin, who enjoys the protection of the military. Zola is convicted of libel and forced to flee France, but it later transpires that his hunch is correct; in 1899 the case is sent for review and the convicted Dreyfus is pardoned.

Society in Russia is gripped by the Dreyfus affair just as much as in France. Anton Chekhov, on the other hand, is convinced that Dreyfus is innocent and quarrels fiercely with his friend, the publisher Alexei Suvorin, who writes in his magazine New Time that the Jewish Dreyfus is obviously guilty. Leo Tolstoy agrees with Suvorin. “I don’t know Dreyfus himself, but I know many similar ‘Dreifuses’, and they all are guilty,” Tolstoy tells in an interview.

The Dreyfus affair occupies the minds of many, one of which belongs to the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, who works as the Paris correspondent of the liberal Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. After Dreyfus’s conviction, Herzl, on hearing cries of “Death to the Jews” on the streets of Paris, concludes that his people are not safe in Europe and should seek prosperity abroad. He starts work on a book entitled The Jewish State, which is published in Vienna in 1896. That same year the book is translated into English, French, and Russian, and the following year Herzl founds the World Zionist Organization. His goal is to create a separate Jewish state.

Initially, Herzl looks to Africa and ponders the idea of a Jewish state in Kenya, where land has been offered by British politicians sympathetic to the cause. However, most of his adherents consider the area to be uninhabitable, so Herzl switches his focus to Palestine, where he foresees no problems with the Arab population, who presently live under the Ottoman Empire. Herzl believes that the Arabs will welcome Jewish settlers in a neighborly spirit.

At the same time as Herzl is creating his Zionist organization and hatching plans to take the Jews from an increasingly hostile Europe, the Jews of the Russian Empire decide to follow different paths. In 1897, the year of the birth of Zionism, the Bund is set up in Russia. Unlike Herzl and his followers, members of the Bund believe in remaining and fighting for their rights at home. Their slogan is: “Our country is where we live.” They are proud to speak a variant of German Yiddish, whereas Herzl’s supporters are busy reviving Ancient Hebrew. The Bund activists are completely secular, very left-wing (like most of Europe’s politicized youth), and indignant about the unfair accusations against Dreyfus.

The Bund’s first congress in 1897 is attended by Gregory Gershuni. Unlike most of the other participants, he does not like the idea of fighting exclusively for Jewish rights and prefers a political struggle for the rights of all the peoples of Russia. He declines to join the Bund and instead sets up his own circle in Minsk, where he meets “Babushka” Breshko-Breshkovskaya.

AN ISLAND OF CALM

Back in 1898 Russia adopts a law limiting the working day to eleven-and-a-half hours per day (ten hours for public holidays and night shifts). The main lobbyist of the law is believed to be Finance Minister Sergei Witte, whose ulterior priority is to protect the major industrialists and not curtail the working day too much. The Ministry of the Interior, meanwhile, is making efforts to slash the number of hours in the working day. It does not care for big business, but about the regular strikes that it has to police. The security services are alarmed at how aggressively the Bund activists and other revolutionaries are stirring up the workers.

The head of the secret police in Moscow, Sergei Zubatov, believes that his service should take charge of the struggle for acceptable working conditions. Paradoxically, if the Interior Ministry is on the side of the workers in the conflict with employers, it will be easier to suppress anti-government propaganda and subdue those disaffected with the regime.

Zubatov begins what is known as the “legalization of the working-class movement” by creating a union under the auspices of the Interior Ministry. It is a challenge not only to employers, but also the Ministry of Finance, which is responsible for employment labor relations. Witte is unhappy about Zubatov’s undertaking, but turns a blind eye to begin with, since it is limited to Moscow.

Zubatov sets up workers’ circles that host lectures by university professors to educate the people and, in case of conflict with employers, hire Interior Ministry lawyers. Zubatov’s movement is very successful: a large-scale demonstration on 22 February 1902 sees forty-five thousand people march in the direction of the Kremlin to lay a wreath at the monument to Emperor Alexander II.^* A requiem service is being held at the time, attended by the son of Alexander II, Grand Duke Sergei. There are no police; the workers themselves provide security.

The rally has an obvious political purpose. Zubatov has timed it to coincide with the latest student unrest to demonstrate that, unlike the young, the workers are as loyal as ever. He succeeds.

At this moment Moscow is considered the most peaceful city in the empire. The revolution is stifled, the workers obedient. The Moscow authorities are considered the most effective in the country.

During his heart-to-hearts with young detainees, Zubatov comes to the conclusion that most revolutionaries are not fanatics, but have no way to express themselves other than joining the underground movement. “The Bund has already sprung surprisingly deep roots among the Jewish population, and simple folk are using banned publications to teach their children how to read and write,” recalls Zubatov.

Based on the success of the trade unions, Zubatov comes up with a similar way of dealing with the Bund. He creates an anti-Bund, or spoiler party,^* tasked with attracting all of Russia’s politically active Jews, where they can be controlled. Zubatov’s brainchild morphs into the Independent Jewish Workers’ Party, essentially the first legal political party in Russia—created and funded by the state, but not pro-government (at least superficially). On the contrary, its manifesto is to fight for the rights of Jews.

The Russian Interior Ministry does not only confront the Bund. In 1900, a group of Narodniks in Kuokkala in the Grand Duchy of Finland (part of the Russian Empire) try to publish an underground newspaper called Revolutionary Russia. The newspaper is published just once in 1900 and again in 1901, this time in Tomsk. Another issue is in the planning, but in September that year the police raid the printing house and arrest all the employees.

The raid is a deft operation made possible by a new undercover agent who has infiltrated the ranks of the populists. He is the thirty-year-old son of a poor Jewish tailor from Grodno province, an engineer by trade, who once studied in Karlsruhe, Germany. Born Yevno Azef, he has changed his name to sound more melodious to the Russian ear: Yevgeny.

Azef’s background is very similar to Gershuni’s. Both come from very poor Jewish families and grew up in the Pale of Settlement.

Gershuni and Azef are peers. Having both joined the underground revolutionary movement of Narodniks at a very early age, they have since followed very different trajectories: Gershuni is the life and soul of the party, a natural leader, a good speaker, and everyone’s favorite, while the fat, clumsy Azef is disliked and untrusted even by close comrades. Just as Zubatov once took offense at Gotz and company and informed on them to the police, so too Azef, on leaving Rostov for Germany, writes a denunciation against his old comrades to the Moscow secret police (Okhrana), asking for fifty roubles^* for the service.

As a student in Karlsruhe, Azef is of scant use, but in Moscow he becomes far more valuable and delivers reports directly to Zubatov, who rates them highly. Zubatov always teaches his subordinates to treat agents “like a woman with whom you’re having a secret affair—one wrong move and you’ll dishonor her.”

Like Zubatov, in due course Azef would probably have been compromised and moved to a regular police job. But in December 1901, during a trip to Berlin, he meets Gershuni.

Azef takes a liking to Gershuni and protects him from the police. Gershuni becomes Azef’s best friend.

Gershuni’s activity is truly remarkable. By 1902 he has managed the improbable. Years of underground shuttle diplomacy across Russia under a false passport, urging disparate groups of Narodniks to unite, have borne fruit. All the largest Narodnik organizations in Russia and abroad in Paris and Switzerland have agreed to join forces. Azef is not the only one to fall under Gershuni’s spell.

THE NEW RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉ CAPITAL

Following his successful mission in Russia, Gershuni travels to Paris to see Gotz. They discuss the failure of the opposition press in Russia, namely the raid of the printing house in Tomsk. Gotz argues against an underground newspaper at home, especially one that is published only once a year: it is nothing more than “a cry in a vacuum.” Using his experience of having managed a large company in Odessa, Gotz decides that the best option is to take over the reins of Revolutionary Russia and publish it in Europe. His choice of location falls on Geneva, where the old printing press of the group People’s Will still stands. The fact that there are no prominent Narodniks in Geneva is not a problem, believes Gotz. It’s more important to get printing.

Gershuni advises Gotz to contact the young, talented journalist Viktor Chernov, who has recently moved from Tambov to Bern, the backwater capital of Switzerland. Chernov is another of Zubatov’s “detainees.” He spent six months at the police station on Moscow’s Prechistenka Street, where Zubatov tried to persuade him to cooperate with the police. But Chernov refused and was transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress for six months, before being exiled to Tambov, south of Moscow.

Gotz goes to visit Chernov in Bern. During their first meeting he explains to this virtual stranger that there is nothing to be done in Bern, and he should move to Geneva, where together they will publish a new newspaper. “I’ll be there tomorrow,” Chernov readily agrees.

Geneva is not the most popular place for Russian émigrés in the late nineteenth century. Like Bern, it is a relative wilderness where nothing happens. Active politicians and journalists have no one to talk to there. Political refugees usually live in larger cities, with London the first option. That is where Alexander Herzen first published his opposition journal The Bell in 1857. London is also the home of Peter Kropotkin, the patriarch of the anarchist movement. Second is Paris, where the late Narodnik leader Pyotr Lavrov resided, and where the left is strong and supportive of their Russian comrades. The third most popular choice is Germany, primarily Munich. The German classics of socialism (Marx, Engels, Bebel) are sacred texts for many Russian revolutionaries.

However, Geneva, chosen by Gotz as the new capital of the Russian émigré opposition, is already home to one fairly well-known and rather odious character: the forty-six-year-old Georgy Plekhanov.

He, too, was once a Narodnik, but in 1880 (a year before the assassination of Alexander II and the annihilation of People’s Will) he emigrated to Switzerland. There, having reconsidered his views, he took an interest in Marxism, becoming the first Russian preacher of this doctrine, which later became fashionable. Plekhanov is one of very few revolutionaries not to have suffered for their beliefs.

In 1901, when Gotz decides to take over the publication of Revolutionary Russia, three young journalist friends arrive in Geneva. They also want to publish a newspaper—not populist, but Marxist. They go to their idol, Plekhanov, for his blessing. He is a living legend for Russian Marxists, like the late Lavrov for the populist Narodniks.

The three newcomers are often published in the underground press. The youngest of them, and most famous at the time, writes under the pseudonym Martov, but his real name is Yuly Tsederbaum, a twenty-eight-year-old Jew and a convinced social democrat. The second is Alexander Potresov, already a hardened revolutionary at the age of thirty-two. The third is the thirty-one-year-old Vladimir Ulyanov, who publishes under the name Petrov. He has yet to invent for himself the more recognizable sobriquet of Lenin.

However, the meeting with the legendary Plekhanov does not justify their expectations. The three comrades hope that the “patriarch” will use his authority to help them set up a newspaper in Geneva called Spark (Iskra). But Plekhanov wants control of the paper for himself, and expects his young audience to comply. Horrified, the three depart for Munich and open an editorial office there.

The main role is played by Martov, who writes most of the articles. Plekhanov, too, regularly submits pieces, despite what happened earlier. “Petrov” does much of the donkey work. While his stellar comrades create, this fanatical workaholic edits, proofreads, typesets, and orders new texts. Plekhanov visits the editorial office in Munich and likes what he sees—above all, the future Lenin. “Petrov is a great guy. I didn’t doubt it before and even less so now,” he writes to a friend. “It’s just a pity that his administrative work prevents him from reading and writing.”

LITTLE RUSSIA

The year 1902 marks a watershed in Russian politics, although the Russian capital barely notices it, since the major changes are all taking place abroad. And at the end of the nineteenth century Europe is teeming with Russian political émigrés. Hitherto, they have felt like outcasts, unable to influence the situation in their home country. But in 1902 everything changes. The number of Russian political émigrés becomes so great that there is talk of the emergence of an alternative Russian civil society—a huge number of Russia’s most educated and active people are concentrated in Europe, because they cannot return home. Henceforth, the most important discussions about the future of Russia take place in Europe, where the shapers of public opinion now live. The Russian diaspora is no longer a branch of Russia; it is no longer clear which is the branch and which the trunk. Europe is becoming a testing ground for ideas that will be implemented in Russia over the next fifteen years.

The Russian-speaking community in Europe is self-sufficient and immersed in internal disputes, conflicts, and debates. It is constantly replenished with new arrivals fleeing Russia. Until 1902 this “Little Russia” (although the thirty-five-thousand-strong community is not so little) had two capitals: Geneva and Munich. It was these cities that hosted the most important émigré Russian-language newspapers Revolutionary Russia and Spark.

In January 1902 Revolutionary Russia triumphantly announces the creation of a unified Socialist Revolutionary Party. Moreover, its new leaders, Gotz and Gershuni, decide that the successor party to People’s Will should return to what brought it notoriety in the last century: terror.

Gotz draws up the charter of the SRs and instructs Gershuni to hunt down and destroy Russian officialdom. “The purpose of the militant organization is to fight the existing order by targeting its representatives, who are the most criminal and dangerous enemies of freedom,” reads the charter. “By eliminating them, the militant organization not only acts in self-defense, but sows fear and disorganization in the ranks of the ruling classes with the aim of making the government aware that the autocratic system can be maintained no longer.”

On 2 April 1902, Interior Minister Dmitry Sipyagin attends a government meeting. An officer approaches him and hands him an envelope, saying that it is a letter from the Moscow governor general, Grand Duke Sergei. Sipyagin holds out his hand, whereupon the officer takes out a gun and shoots the minister point-blank. The other ministers come running.

“If he’d had several revolvers, he would have shot us all,” recalls the transport minister. “There was no guard. Just the doorman and Sipyagin’s wounded valet.”

The killer is the expelled university student Stepan Balmashev, disguised as an officer. His victim dies on the way to the hospital.

Leaflets are distributed in the capital explaining the motives of the murder and signed “The militant Socialist Revolutionary Party.” There is a subheading: “You will be rewarded according to your deeds.” The mastermind behind the assassination is Gregory Gershuni.

Witte is struck not so much by the death of Sipyagin as society’s reaction to it. It turns out that many people despised the minister and are jubilant at his death. Ten days later the publisher Suvorin visits the finance minister and finds him despondent: “Yesterday I was with Witte. I have never seen him so depressed, like a bedraggled hen. He said that if he had a good enough reason, he would retire. It was obvious from what he said that he has few tools with which to govern. He spoke about Sipyagin, calling him a ‘wonderful and noble’ man, who acted honestly and sincerely and knew no other way.”

Witte recalls his last conversation with Sipyagin. They talked long and hard about who should be the new head of the Interior Ministry if the worn-out Sipyagin were to resign. “Anyone except Plehve,” said Sipyagin. A few days after the assassination, Vyacheslav von Plehve is duly appointed.

Plehve’s appointment to head the Interior Ministry at such a difficult time is logical. He has the most experience dealing with terrorists. In 1881, immediately after the assassination of Alexander II, he took charge of the police department that spearheaded the investigation. It is widely believed that his quick, no-nonsense response is what crushed the terrorist organization People’s Will.

The careerist Plehve has dreamt of heading the Interior Ministry, and for the past ten years tsarist circles have considered him the most likely candidate to succeed to the position. When in 1894 Nicholas II was vacillating between Sipyagin and Plehve, Pobedonostsev characterized them as follows: “Plehve is a scoundrel, Sipyagin a fool.” He promptly recommended his own man, then Deputy Interior Minister Ivan Goremykin. But Goremykin, insipid like his patron Pobedonostsev, did not inspire Nicholas, who opted instead for the “fool” Sipyagin. Goremykin will later become a government fixture and two-time prime minister, but in 1902, after the murder of Sipyagin, he is overlooked by Nicholas II in favor of the “scoundrel.”

Plehve cannot stand Witte and believes that the latter’s conniving has prevented his appointment for such a long time. The feeling is mutual, with Witte considering Plehve to be wholly unscrupulous (something that Witte himself is accused of by his detractors).

In fact, Plehve is a professional police officer and has principles. On becoming the new interior minister, he immediately begins to enforce his own system of combating the revolutionary organizations. His plan is to embed a police agent in every terrorist group. To defeat the enemy, you must get close and take control of it, he believes.

Soon after his appointment Plehve meets Zubatov, who delivers a detailed report on the revolutionary movement and the plan to deal with it. “Plehve was gripped by a single idea: there is no revolution. It’s all a fantasy made up by the intelligentsia. The broad masses of workers and peasants are deeply monarchist. The agitators and revolutionaries must be caught and straightened out,” recalls Alexander Gerasimov, the then-head of the Kharkov police.

Plehve is primarily attracted by Zubatov’s ability to recruit provocateurs and his surveillance know-how, and wants to extend these methods throughout Russia. He moves Moscow’s police chiefs to Saint Petersburg, making Zubatov the head of a special department and dispatching his assistants across the country to head up the law enforcement agencies in all the major regions of the empire.

Plehve creates a colossal system of surveillance to keep tabs on those suspected of political offenses—a “revolution” in the history of Russian law enforcement. Never before have the secret services been so active, employed agents provocateurs, or invaded society’s privacy so deeply. Plehve is one of the first security officers in the world to be tasked with fighting terrorism. His solution resonates to this day: society must sacrifice privacy for the sake of its security.

Plehve effectively establishes a new approach to policing whereby the intelligence agencies have the right to commit crimes in order to prevent them. He could be considered the “spiritual grandfather” of the future Cheka and all its subsequent iterations, up to and including the KGB and today’s FSB.

Ever since Gershuni’s call to eliminate Russian officialdom, the police have been in disarray. To begin with, they do not know which organization is behind the crimes, if any. Sipyagin’s assassination is initially considered to be a lone-wolf attack.

“The police were determined to show that the acts of terrorism were not due to widespread militant sentiment among the masses as a result of government atrocities … but because of the ill will and mischief of a few individuals, needless to say the Jews,” recalls Gershuni. Plehve “did not understand the broad social nature” of the revolutionary movement, Plehve’s subordinate, the gendarme Alexander Spiridovich, agrees. The new minister “saw it as the reincarnation of People’s Will and a manifestation of the malevolence of a handful of energetic revolutionaries. He thought it would suffice to remove them and the revolution would stall.”

But by 1902 the menace of People’s Will seems to be stalking the streets once more. In January, the Russian authorities learn from Revolutionary Russia that the Narodniks have joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, with devastating consequences. The assassination of Interior Minister Sipyagin is the hard-hitting start to the new party’s “advertising campaign.”

Henceforth, the SRs become a byword for the struggle against the regime. The authorities understand that the main danger is not the Bund after all, but the reincarnated People’s Will, revived and ready to resort to tried-and-tested terror.

The next generation of Narodniks is led by Mikhail Gotz, Gregory Gershuni, and Viktor Chernov. Their immediate forebears have departed the scene almost entirely, save for the celebrated Babushka.

NUMBER ONE ENEMY OF THE STATE

Gregory Gershuni’s terror continues. He selects a volunteer, a worker named Foma Kachura, to assassinate the governor of Kharkov, Prince Obolensky, who has brutally suppressed a peasant uprising. Kachura shoots twice, but misses.

The police struggle to put a face to the crimes. It takes nearly a year of investigation to conclude that Gershuni and Babushka are behind them. Plehve gives Zubatov a photo of Gershuni, instructing that it should stand on his desk until the leader of the SRs is caught.

For the police, Gershuni is the devil incarnate, able to cloud the minds of recruits and get them to commit crimes against their better judgment. “Slowly but surely Gershuni ensnared his targets until they had no choice but to carry out his orders,” describes the gendarme Spiridovich. “There is something satanic about Gershuni’s sway over his victims. Always equipped with forged passports, he was highly elusive.”

For a long time the police cannot figure out if another mastermind is behind Gershuni. Gershuni reports on the terror operations to his “boss” Mikhail Gotz, and together they develop a special cipher. They exchange postcards, but the text is not important; only the picture matters. If the card depicts a woman (usually a popular Italian opera singer), it means bad news—the operation has failed. A male figure means success. The unwitting harbingers of glad tidings include the writers Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Anton Chekhov.

HARNESSING THE DEVIL

In developing a nationwide network of agents provocateurs, Sergei Zubatov acquires huge influence over Interior Minister Plehve, which he uses to persuade the minister to back another major experiment—a network of trade unions. Outlining the idea, he does not fail to mention that Finance Minister Witte is an ardent opponent, which makes Plehve immediately give the go-ahead to launch the experiment in the major cities of Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Odessa, and Kiev.

Zubatov starts searching for people to set up the trade union circles. A promising candidate for the role of trade union leader of Saint Petersburg’s workers is the priest Georgy Gapon.

In his memoirs Gapon claims that he never trusted Zubatov. However, after talks lasting until three in the morning, the priest agrees to work for him.

Zubatov does not conceal his hatred of the revolutionaries: “Look at the poison they’re spreading among the people,” he says to Gapon, holding up a confiscated copy of Revolutionary Russia, published abroad and illegally brought into the country. The priest is curious and asks to be allowed to read the article by Peter Kropotkin. His wish is granted. In return, Gapon promises to go to Moscow over Christmas to see how Zubatov’s trade unions are getting on.

In Moscow, Gapon meets with journalists, who explain to him the true purpose of Zubatov’s “trade unions.” “It’s an alliance,” says one reporter, “a cunning trap set by the police to separate the working class from the intelligentsia and kill the political movement. It undermines the power of the workers. At first we didn’t understand the real motive. We agreed to help educate the workers, but when we realized what was happening we withdrew from the organization.”

Afterwards, Gapon attends an Epiphany service and sees all of Moscow’s top officials, headed by the chief of the Moscow police, Dmitry Trepov, Zubatov’s patron. “Instead of heartfelt prayerfulness, I saw nothing but a parade of uniforms. No one seemed to care about the meaning of this holy day, only about their positions. The police treated the common folk in a most unceremonious manner. I had to intervene on behalf of a poor parishioner who had been hit in the face by a policeman for no reason. These self-appointed defenders of the people, I thought to myself, treat them like cattle.”

Gapon comes to the conclusion that all the higher ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church and top officials are secret police agents. The editor of the church journal Missionary Review, for instance, as well as Pobedonostsev, regularly report to the security services. “Russian priests are police officers in cassocks. What’s worse, the police catch only the bodies of their victims, while the priests capture their souls; they are the real enemies of the working people and the suffering classes,” concludes Gapon. However, true to his dream of “harnessing the devil,” he decides that he can play along. “By pretending to join Zubatov, I could achieve my own goal of setting up a genuine workers’ union.”

TWO WORLDS, TWO GERMANS

Like Zubatov, Plehve believes that if society is under tight control it will calm down. However, their notion of control differs. After being appointed the new interior minister, Plehve continues to serve as the secretary of state of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where, together with Governor-General Bobrikov, he starts a policy of Russification. Through Plehve’s efforts, Russian becomes the region’s official language. That is followed by conscription of Finnish nationals and tighter censorship.

The new head of the Ministry of Interior continues the Russification drive. The Russification of the Caucasus and repressive measures against the local indigenous people are top of the agenda. Most of the Committee of Ministers, including Witte and Pobedonostsev, are against Plehve’s campaign. But he has the support of Nicholas II.

National policy is a cause of permanent conflict between Finance Minister Witte and Interior Minister Plehve. They both descend from German nobles who adopted Orthodoxy, but have taken different paths in life. Witte was born in Tbilisi (now capital of Georgia, at that time called Tiflis), studied at grammar school in Chisinau (now the capital of Moldova) and at university in Odessa, and then worked in Odessa and Kiev (in modern Ukraine). In 1871, when Witte had just graduated from Odessa University, the city witnessed a pogrom. Many students were Jews, who tried to defend themselves. But the Jewish students were arrested by the police, while the “pogromists” were given free rein. Witte’s sympathies lay with his fellow students.

Plehve’s experience was more traumatic. Born in Warsaw (now capital of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire), he attended grammar school until the Polish uprising against Russia in 1863. Warsaw was in uproar, tearing down signs in the Russian language, threatening ethnic Russians, and raiding Orthodox cemeteries, where graves were trampled and flower beds torn up. Plehve felt like a “Russian occupier.” In 1863, aged seventeen, he moved to his mother’s relatives in the Kaluga province of Russia, where he finished secondary school, before studying law at Moscow University. Having been a Russian in Poland, he was considered a German in Moscow, yet always did his best to look Russian and prove his “Russianness.” This is what Witte has to say about his hated “comrade” Plehve: “Like any renegade, he developed a hostility towards anything that was not Orthodox. I don’t think he believed in God any more than in the devil, but to curry favor with the higher-ups and the governor general of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, he showed particular devoutness.”

Plehve is highly suspicious of all ethnic minorities, but particularly the Jews. He consistently supports the increasing restrictions against them. An even more forceful proponent of the anti-Jewish laws is the tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke Sergei. No sooner having taken over as Moscow’s governor general, he prohibits Jews from settling in Moscow and evicts all Jewish artisans, about thirty thousand in total. But the grand duke does not stop there, and in 1897 orders the eviction of all Jews studying medicine.

Both Grand Duke Sergei and Interior Minister Plehve support the introduction of nationwide restrictions on the Jews. Witte does not. In his memoirs, he hints that the late Emperor Alexander III once asked him if he sympathized with the Jews. Witte asserts that he replied: “I asked His Majesty: ‘Is it possible to drown all the Jews in the Black Sea?’ If not, the only solution to the Jewish question is to let them live normally and phase out the laws created specifically for them, since ultimately there is no other solution to the Jewish question than to afford Jews the same rights as Your Majesty’s other subjects.”

Even if Witte’s memoirs are slightly embellished, he has a personal reason to advocate for the rights of Jews. In 1891, he married his second wife, Matilde Ivanovna (Isaakovna) Lisanevich, a Jewish convert to Orthodoxy. The fact that Matilda is a Jewish divorcee represents a serious obstacle to her being accepted at court. It is no secret to him that not only Grand Duke Sergei and Plehve are prejudiced against the Jews, but Nicholas II as well. In 1895, when a ready-made decision from the State Council to relax the anti-Jewish laws is presented to the tsar, he rejects the document, writing his own resolution: “I will do it when I feel like it.”

According to Witte, the numerous anti-Jewish laws exacerbate the problem of corruption: “The administration takes more bribes from them than anyone else. In some places Jews are subject to a special ‘bribe tax.’ It goes without saying that the poor shoulder the burden of the anti-Jewish measures, for the rich can easily afford to pay. Far from being oppressed, rich Jews sometimes benefit from the discrimination, for it gives them influence over the local administration.”

As a result, writes Witte, the harassment of the Jews has “sown the seeds of revolution among the Jewish masses, especially the young. Thirty years ago, they were considered cowards, but now they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the revolution as bandits and killers. Not all Jews are revolutionaries, of course, but there is no doubt that they make up a larger percentage of the movement than any other ethnic group in Russia.”

For a long time, Jews have had a particular status in the Russian Empire. Their numbers increased sharply in the eighteenth century when Empress Catherine II added parts of Poland to her dominion. However, the extensive curtailment of their rights only began in the nineteenth century.

Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I were both ill disposed towards the Jewish people, believing, as they did, in “blood libel”—the widespread notion in Western Europe, dating back to the Middle Ages, that Jews commit ritual sacrifice of Christian children (from the seventeenth century onwards, another myth circulates in Western Europe that the recipe for matzo bread includes the sacrificial blood of Christian infants). On one occasion, Alexander I orders a review of a case involving the alleged murder of a three-year-old child in the town of Velizh, near Smolensk. Dozens of Jews have already been acquitted of any wrongdoing, but the conqueror of Napoleon is not convinced. They are again acquitted (by this time Nicholas I is on the throne), but he, too, on signing the State Council resolution, adds his “personal opinion” that the Jews are not to be trusted.

It is Nicholas I who initiates the anti-Jewish laws in the Russian Empire and introduces the Pale of Settlement, allowing Jews to live only in the western and southwestern provinces of the empire (today’s Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Poland, and a part of Ukraine) and forbidding them from certain cities and rural areas, confining them largely to the shtetls. The Jews are expelled from Saint Petersburg in 1826 and from Kiev the following year (despite the fact that Kiev is part of the Pale of Settlement), and later they are also banned from residing in Yalta, Sevastopol, and Nikolaev. The year 1835 sees the adoption of “the Statute on the Jews,” which entrenches their status as an oppressed people.

Under Alexander II, the architect of Russia’s most important reforms of the nineteenth century, there have been some concessions. Jews with higher education now have the right to settle outside the Pale, as do goldsmiths, dental technicians, and other artisans in sought-after professions, plus “first-guild merchants.” The fee to become a first-guild merchant is 575 roubles^* annually for ten years (which have to be spent inside the Pale of Settlement). In the eleventh year (i.e., after paying almost 6,000 roubles^†) a Jewish merchant can move. Having met these requirements, Wissotzky and Gotz are allowed to live in Moscow and enjoy benefits denied to other Jews.

The nineteenth century sees numerous anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. The first takes place in Odessa and is started by local traders of Greek origin who resent the competition. A powerful wave of pogroms surges across the country after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, even though the Jews have little to do with it. The killer himself is Ignatius Grinevitsky, a Pole, while most members of his group are ethnic Russians. Only one of the conspirators, Gesya Gelfand, has Jewish origins and is also one of the few women involved.

After the murder of his father, Alexander III initiates a series of anti-Jewish laws. The year 1882 sees the publication of the “Interim Rules,” forbidding Jews to acquire real estate outside the Pale of Settlement or to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays. The pogroms and anti-Jewish laws draw a sizeable response from European liberals; for example, the writer Victor Hugo becomes an active member of the French Committee for Assisting Russian Jews. Among Russian conservatives, such organizations are perceived as part of Europe’s ingrained prejudice against Russia.

KING SOLOMON’S PLOT

In April 1902, the renowned Russian journalist Mikhail Menshikov publishes an article in Suvorin’s newspaper New Time under the title “Conspiracies Against Humanity.” In it, he mentions a letter from a female reader. Citing a terminal illness, she wants to see him to hand over some “invaluable documents.” Menshikov agrees, meets the old lady, and then makes fun of her in his article. The “matter of worldly importance imparted from above” that she alludes to seems to him like a case of senile delirium. This curious incident results in the first ever mention of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The sixty-six-year-old woman’s name is Yustinia Glinka, the daughter of a Russian former ambassador to Brazil, who has lived abroad for many years. She recounts that during a sojourn in Nice (“long chosen as the secret capital of Jewry”) she discovered documents about a Jewish plot dating back to the year 929 BC in Jerusalem. Although Menshikov has a reputation as a conservative and even a nationalist (which is why Glinka turned to him), he declines to publish the documents.

He does not believe in their authenticity and paraphrases them in an ironic tone: “Startled by their contents, I asked her to give me a brief summary,” he writes.

I heard terrible things. The leaders of the Jewish people, it seems, as far back as the time of King Solomon, decided to subordinate all of humanity to their will and assert the primacy of the kingdom of David for all eternity. A secret alliance was concluded to take over the trade and industry of all nations. Scattered across the Earth, the Jews sought to undermine the material and moral well-being of others and to seize control of the world’s capital cities to suck dry and enslave the masses. With Jesuit, nay, devilish cunning, the Jews adopted the propaganda of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and anarchy to undermine the foundations of order and Christianity with the aim of ensnaring the whole of humanity in brutal despotism. It took one-and-a-half thousand years to destroy the ancient pagan kingdoms, and now Christianity stands on the verge of collapse. The Jews (according to Glinka) represent the serpent of the Apocalypse, crawling from country to country. It already has its coils wrapped around France, Germany and England. Now the serpent is raising its head above Saint Petersburg. All the events of recent years—the assassinations, the public disorder, the gold standard, the unrest in China—are the work of this abominable creature. Having swallowed Saint Petersburg, the serpent will proceed to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and Constantinople. When it once more reaches Jerusalem, humanity will be forever enslaved. The Jews will consolidate their eternal kingdom. Mankind will not guess who its masters are, but will bear the yoke submissively, like domesticated animals.

Menshikov does not try to establish the identity of the real author of the text, since he considers it to be a delirious hoax. However, he notes that copies of the “Protocols” may be in the possession of other journalists. A few years later these journalists will make themselves known, but for now, having been roundly derided by Menshikov, the “Protocols” remain on the shelf.^*

JEWISH SELF-DEFENSE

Rumors of the imminent pogroms spread throughout the Pale, including one of the most Jewish cities of the Russian Empire, Odessa. The journalist Vladimir Zhabotinsky (later Ze’ev Jabotinsky) of Odessa News recalls that some dismissed the rumors as idle chitchat, believing that the police would not allow it to happen; others are whispering that the police themselves will instigate the violence. Everyone is very alarmed. For the past twenty years Odessa has been relatively calm.

Zhabotinsky decides that self-defense units are needed and writes to Odessa’s most influential Jews, urging them to buy weapons to protect themselves from the pogroms. The letters remain unanswered. A few weeks later Zhabotinsky is paid a visit by a childhood friend. First, he says that the letters were a waste of time: the rich Jews are too frightened to budge. Second, self-defense units are being set up anyway, and Zhabotinsky can help if he wants. To his surprise, the self-defense units in Odessa are run by Zubatov’s local cell, the Independent Jewish Workers’ Party.

Zhabotinsky comes on board. In a few days he and his new comrades manage to raise more than 500 roubles^† (a large sum), plus an arsenal of guns, crowbars, and knives. Leaflets are printed in Russian and Yiddish: “The content was very simple: two articles of the Criminal Code clearly stating that killing in self-defense is exempt from punishment, and a few words exhorting young Jews not to let their people be slaughtered like cattle.”

At first, Zhabotinsky wonders why the police are so relaxed about the Jews amassing arms. That is before he realizes that the self-defense units are being set up under the direction of Genrik Shayevich, the head of Zubatov’s cell in Odessa.

In the end, there is no pogrom in Odessa. It happens instead in Chisinau. Zhabotinsky visits the scene and recalls that reports of the first pogrom made little impression, apart from a few donations from European Jews sent to his newspaper in support of the victims.

A few months later he is elected as Odessa’s delegate to the World Zionist Congress, launching his international career. History will remember Zhabotinsky as the organizer of the first Jewish self-defense units in Russia. In 1918, he will travel to Palestine and become one of the forerunners of the future Jewish state.

HOUSE NO. 13

One of the owners of the still unpublished “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is Pavel Krushevan, a Moldovan-born publisher of two newspapers: Znamya [Standard] in Saint Petersburg and Bessarabian at home in Chisinau. Bessarabian is the only daily newspaper in the provincial Chisinau, where Jews make up nearly forty percent of the population. The “Jewish threat” is a constant topic in the paper.

In March 1903 Bessarabian reports that Jewish residents of the village of Dubossary have allegedly carried out the ritual murder of a fourteen-year-old Ukrainian.^*

The investigation quickly unmasks the real killer, who turns out to be a cousin of the murdered boy. However, the local authorities ban all coverage of the case, and the article in Bessarabian goes uncontested. On 6 April, Easter Sunday, a pogrom breaks out. News of the attack spreads around the town, but the police do not intervene—the governor is awaiting orders from higher up.

This is how Russia’s top reporter at the time, Vladimir Korolenko, describes that day in his essay “House No. 13”:

At about 10 a.m. a well-meaning policeman advised the Jews to stay indoors and then sat down on the roadside, seemingly able to do nothing more. There he remained, as if posing for a sculptor. Just a few steps away the tragedy of the Jewish shanties unfolded in all its spontaneous horror. The crowd appeared at around 11 a.m., accompanied by two patrols, which, unfortunately, had received no orders. The 50-60 strong crowd was made up of ‘neighborly’ Moldovans. They went up to a wine store and said to the owner: ‘Give us thirty roubles^* or we’ll kill you.’ He paid up, took cover and saved his skin. Then the pogrom began. A few minutes later the square was strewn with glass and bits of furniture.

The most notorious episode of Korolenko’s report tells how three Jews—two men and a girl—climb into an attic. Hearing their pursuers, they begin to break through the roof to get out: “They were desperate to smash a hole in the roof with their bare hands. They had to get out of the attic. Up above was sunshine, down below was the crowd,” writes Korolenko.

The three scramble onto the roof, and the crowd starts jeering. Someone throws a tub. (“The tub clatters against the roof, and the crowd laughs…”) All three are eventually forced to jump down. The girl lands in a pile of debris and survives. The men are killed by the baying crowd.

“The two men [Maklin and Berlatsky] were injured in the fall and then finished off with sticks by the vile mob. Laughing, the bloodthirsty executioners left them for dead in a dirty puddle of spilled wine and debris.”

At 5 p.m., having received his long-awaited orders (and seemingly unable to act in the meantime), the governor steps in to restore relative calm. According to official figures, forty-three people have been killed, thirty-eight of them Jewish.

After the Chisinau massacre, self-defense units are established throughout the Pale of Settlement. A month later an attempted pogrom in Homel, Belarus, turns into a full-scale battle when the Jews fight back: five Jews and four Christians are killed. “The Jewish streets changed after Chisinau,” remarks Zhabotinsky. “The Jews were grief-stricken, but also ashamed. The shame of Chisinau was not repeated in Homel. The grief cut just as deep, but there was no more shame.”

The Chisinau pogrom makes the headlines across Russia and the world. European human rights organizations start collecting donations for the victims. The initial reaction in Russia is unequivocally condemnatory. Leo Tolstoy denounces it, as does John of Kronstadt, the most popular priest in the country: “The people of Russia are capable of such stupidity!” he writes in an appeal to Chisinau’s Christian population. “What heathenism! What waywardness! A Christian feast is transformed into hell on Earth, a satanic orgy of bloodletting. Russian people, my brothers! What are you doing? Why do you treat your compatriots with such barbarism and savagery?”

Soon, however, the tone changes. Vladimir Korolenko arrives at the scene and writes his essay “House No. 13,” only to see it banned by the censor. Yet the Saint Petersburg newspaper Znamya, published by the nationalist Pavel Krushevan, is allowed to print its version of events: the Jews allegedly attacked first and provoked the pogrom themselves. The nationalists are outraged by what the Western press is writing, by the collection of donations, and by the fact that so far only Christians have faced trial.

No one about-turns more comprehensively than John of Kronstadt. Znamya now publishes a letter of apology from him: “From the various reports I have become convinced that the Jews themselves were the cause of the carnage that marked the 6^th and 7^th of April. I am assured that the Christians have suffered, while the Jews have been amply recompensed by their own and other brethren for losses and injuries incurred.… I appeal to the Christians of Chisinau: forgive me for my reproach of you. Eyewitness accounts have convinced me that a handful of Christians were provoked into action and that the Jews largely brought the pogrom upon themselves.”

The British newspaper The Times publishes a letter allegedly sent by Interior Minister Plehve to the governor of Bessarabia with a request not to use force against the “pogromists.” The letter is a fake (Plehve actually dismissed the Chisinau governor for failing to stop the pogrom), but the global community believes it. A shocking, and in many respects exaggerated, report on the incident appears in The New York Times.^* The Chisinau pogrom kick-starts a wave of Jewish emigration from Russia, primarily to the United States.

In his memoirs Witte, too, blames Plehve: “I hesitate to suggest that Plehve directly organized the massacre, but he did not oppose this ‘anti-revolutionary countermeasure’ (as he sees it),” writes the finance minister. According to Witte’s memoirs, after the pogrom in Chisinau, Plehve negotiates with “Jewish leaders in Paris” and demands that they persuade young Jews to “stop the revolution,” allegedly saying that he will put an end to the pogroms and the anti-Jewish laws in return. But, according to Witte, Plehve receives the following response from the Jewish leaders: “We are powerless to do so, for most young people are wild with hunger and we do not hold them in our hands. But we strongly believe that if you start relaxing the anti-Jewish measures they will settle down.”

Meanwhile, the unrest continues to grow. On Saint Petersburg’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, a young Jewish man by the name of Dashevsky, a former student from Kiev, attacks the Znamya publisher, Pavel Krushevan, with a knife. Only slightly wounded in the neck, Krushevan seizes the attacker himself. According to the reporter Korolenko, a Jewish doctor on the scene wants to administer first aid, but Krushevan refuses, fearing that it is part of the plot. He demands the death penalty for Dashevsky “on the grounds that he, Mr. Krushevan, is no ordinary man, but a representative of the state idea.” During his interrogation Dashevsky says that the attack on Krushevan was revenge for the Chisinau pogrom. Unlike Menshikov, Krushevan takes the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” at face value and, on a wave of mass hysteria, publishes the text in Znamya under the heading “The Jewish Program to Conquer the World.” The text spreads around Saint Petersburg, and then the world.

THE PRISONER OF NAPLES

Mikhail Gotz is not only the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the editor-in-chief of Revolutionary Russia. More importantly, he is the main sponsor of the SRs, describing himself, according to Viktor Chernov, as the “steward of the revolution and the overseer of the operation to extract maximum funding for the cause.” In other words, the “tea heir” regularly receives money from his billionaire father and uncle in Russia, but takes only a small part, giving the rest to the party.

However, sometimes he has to earn his keep. Chernov recalls how Gotz would “gasp, groan and complain that he had to abandon his favorite pastime [revolution] for a couple of weeks” because of another visit from a rich relative, forcing him to pack a suitcase of suits, tuxedos, luxurious jackets, and ties that his party comrades never saw. Members of the tea dynasty and allied financial magnates would regularly come to Europe to gamble in Monte Carlo or stroll along the Cote d’Azur. It was Gotz’s job to “take them for a walk.”

Gotz uses the encounters to good effect, persuading the visitors that their donations towards “the liberation movement” will bring them luck at the gambling table. Gotz’s work as a tour guide for his relatives and their friends effectively funds the SR party, including its military wing. The tea oligarchs are unaware that their travels are financing the preparations for political assassinations.

In March 1903 Mikhail Gotz and his wife head for Naples, where he is to meet his father, Raphael Gotz, and his sister. In Naples the family intends to travel by boat to the French Riviera, but the trip is unexpectedly called off. On 3 March, Italian police break into Gotz’s hotel room in Naples and seize all his documents. He himself is put in jail.

The arrest has been carried out at the request of the Russian police: Gotz is accused of ordering the assassination of Interior Minister Sipyagin. It marks a breakthrough for the investigation, and Gotz is due to be extradited to Russia for trial. But the Russian authorities underestimate the power of European public opinion. Plehve and his subordinates are not accustomed to paying attention to the Russian public and cannot imagine that the European press might thwart their plans.

The Russian vice-consul in Naples gives interviews to local newspapers, which report the details of the operation to capture the leader of the terrorist organization. It turns out that a Russian police agent tracked Gotz from Switzerland and that the vice-consul himself was present during the search of the hotel room. These revelations spark a scandal: why are representatives of a foreign state telling Italian law enforcers what to do, asks the press.

Leftist politicians across Europe start collecting signatures in support of Gotz. The first to sign the petition is the leader of the French socialists, Jean Jaurès, and the future prime minister of France, George Clemenceau. The arrest of Gotz is discussed in the Italian parliament. Left-wing MPs assert that Italian law prohibits the extradition of a foreign national if the charges are politically motivated. Gotz fits this description, and the parliamentarians are close to demanding the resignation of the government, which has knowingly violated Italian law in collusion with the Russians.

The trial begins. All the Italian media, including the pro-government press, are on the side of the accused. According to Chernov, the evidence for Gotz’s involvement in the murder was collected by the Italian police in a “sloppy and clumsy manner,” making it impossible to link Gotz to the assassination. So the Russian side decides to play its political cards. First, the court hears the Russian ambassador, and then a rumor spreads that Nicholas II is planning to pay an official visit to Italy. If so, it would be very impolite of the king of Italy not to extend the Russian emperor a reciprocal courtesy. When this information is confirmed in parliament, the Italian left warns that if the tsar comes to Italy he will be booed and whistled wherever he goes. In a matter of hours all the whistles in the country are sold. In Florence a special newspaper is published under the title Whistle to mobilize young people against Nicholas II. As a result, the emperor is advised by his Foreign Ministry not to travel. The trial comes to an end, and Russia’s extradition request is turned down. The defendant is only expelled from the country. On 6 May, after spending two months in a Naples prison, Gotz goes free and heads for the French Riviera, as planned.^*

While Gotz is temporarily behind bars in Naples, the police in Russia have one objective: to catch the evil genius of terror, Gregory Gershuni.

In May 1903 he is finally arrested following a tip-off from a member of the SRs’ Kiev cell. Gershuni is taken from Kiev to Saint Petersburg. Along the way he recalls that he imagined Gotz appearing at the police station, disguised as a gendarme, to arrange his escape. But Gotz has only just gotten out of prison himself. Now back in Geneva, he is, according to Viktor Chernov, plagued by visions of his own. He has nightmares of Gershuni in shackles.

Gershuni is taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, the main detention center for political prisoners. The worker Foma Kachura, who shot at the governor of Kharkov, has also been arrested. The gendarme Spiridovich claims that Kachura is terrified of the demonic Gershuni and agrees to testify only after he has seen a photograph of the militant leader in shackles.

Gershuni does not believe at first that his faithful accomplice has told the investigators everything, but changes his mind when they recount details that only Kachura could have known. “My soul descended into hell,” recalls Gershuni. “Do you know what mortal terror is? It is horror at the complexity and mystery of what is called the human soul. Kachura is a traitor! Trapped in the jaws of Russian justice, such a psychological blow is crushing indeed.”

Three months later the investigators offer him a deal: in return for confessing that he belongs to a militant organization, the death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment. The prisoner defiantly refuses: “I am a Jew. You and other fools think that Jews are cowards and will do anything to avoid the gallows. Well, I’ll show you an example of ‘Jewish cowardice’! You say that Jews only know how to rebel? You’ll see that we know how to die. Tell your Plehve that we have nothing to bargain over. Let him do his job, I will do mine.”

The “Jewish cowardice” slur haunts not only Gershuni, but also the entire Pale of Settlement. The Jewish community is stunned by the Chisinau pogrom. Many considered such a thing impossible in the twentieth century. Obviously not. Maybe something more radical is needed.

In June the leaders of the Jewish Independent Workers’ Party hold a meeting in Minsk. The Chisinau pogrom is still raw, and the fact that Genrik Shayevich, the leader of the Odessa cell, played a key role in establishing the Jewish self-defense units in Odessa has done nothing to improve the party’s prestige. On the contrary. There are rumors among Russia’s Jewish population that the authorities arranged the pogroms, as if Plehve personally gave out instructions. This makes cooperation with the Independent Jewish Workers’ Party shameful, and many former supporters turn their backs on it. Even the “independents” themselves do not want to be part of a puppet party or be regarded as agents provocateurs in the pay of the police. The party decides to disband.

Surprisingly, in Saint Petersburg the “independents” are not regarded as loyal puppets. Quite the opposite, Plehve believes that Zubatov’s experiment has gone too far and orders him to curtail the party’s activities with immediate effect. Zubatov demurs, insisting that the state needs a loyal social movement, but Plehve is adamant that the most important thing is to disarm the “anti-government criminals,” for which purpose the Jewish party is not required, since the leaders of the Bund have already been caught and the “independents” are spinning out of control. Zubatov threatens to resign, but Plehve restrains him from doing so.

Zubatov becomes increasingly irritated by the policing methods of his boss. He believes that “the whole of Russia is seething and the revolution cannot be suppressed through police measures.” Plehve’s policy is to “drive the malaise inwards, which can only end badly.” He decides to take his grievances to Plehve’s bitter rival, Sergei Witte. It is not the first time that the reformer of the Ministry of Interior has tried to find a common language with the reformer of the Finance Ministry. The key players’ memoirs recount conflicting versions of events.

According to Alexei Lopukhin, the director of the Imperial Russian police, Witte agrees to help Zubatov have the interior minister removed. Their accomplice is Witte’s longtime friend Prince Meshchersky, the publisher of the newspaper The Citizen, who once recommended Plehve as a minister. The plan is as follows: Zubatov’s subordinates are to write letters to Meshchersky made to look as if they had come from various influential figures. Each letter is to describe how disastrous Plehve’s policies are for Russia and that only Witte is able to save the situation. Meshchersky, in turn, shall go to the emperor with the letters in hand to prove that Witte should replace Plehve.

But Witte insists that there was no conspiracy, that Zubatov came to complain to him about his boss, but that he, Witte, threatened to tell Plehve about their conversation, whereupon they parted company. Witte’s memoirs are often embellished and not entirely reliable, it should be said.

ODESSA ON EDGE

In June a strike begins in Odessa following the unfair dismissal of an iron foundry worker. The city is home to a formidable cell of “independents” (or former “independents,” i.e. members of the Independent Jewish Workers’ Party). Genrik Shayevich is eager to prove that he is not a provocateur or an agent of Plehve. He makes every effort to stand up for the workers.

By July it has turned into a general strike—forty thousand people stop working. Odessa is now without bread, water, and light. The local authorities are at a loss, including Shayevich.

The official response is chaotic, for the authorities have no clue how to deal with the workers. The matter is complicated by the constant interference of Grand Duke Sandro, a childhood friend of the emperor and the new minister of merchant shipping and ports. Odessa, the largest trade port in the empire, falls under his mandate, and the grand duke demands to know who is to blame for the general strike.

The grand duke’s main enemy is in fact Sergei Witte, for the new ministry headed by Sandro has been hived off from the Ministry of Finance. Witte does not conceal his opposition to the move (“It was like having a finger cut off,” he says) and is keen to hinder the grand duke. Sandro in response plots against Witte and even tries to inculpate him for the Odessa strike, but the finance minister shifts the blame to Plehve and his subordinate, Zubatov. Plehve denies it, saying that he knew nothing about Zubatov’s actions in Odessa. In the end the buck stops at the leader of the Odessa “independents,” Genrik Shayevich, who is arrested and put on trial.

From this moment on, Zubatov has serious problems. First, his superiors, fearful of taking responsibility, make him a scapegoat for the Odessa strike. Second, rumors of the alleged plot between Zubatov and Witte reach Plehve. According to the police department head Lopukhin, Zubatov has been betrayed by one of his colleagues. But Witte’s version of events states that the “conspirator” Prince Meshchersky informs on the interior minister (again Witte denies any conspiracy and claims that the matter went no further than speculative talk).

“All Zubatov’s enemies seemed to unite against him and use the moment to bring about his downfall,” says Zubatov’s underling Alexander Spiridovich. “It was loudly declaimed that Zubatov had orchestrated the strike and was himself a revolutionary.”

On 19 August, Plehve summons Zubatov and openly, in front of a witness, puts the accusations to him, the most serious being the disclosure of classified information. Among the papers seized from Shayevich is a letter written by Zubatov, seeking to recruit the former as an agent with the following words: “Dear Genrik Isaevich [Shayevich], I have unexpectedly found a kindred spirit in the shape of the ‘pro-Semitic’ tsar. According to the Eagle [Plehve], the sovereign said, ‘Do not break up the rich Jews, and let the poor ones live.’” Plevhe is indignant that “Zubatov has taken the liberty of relaying the tsar’s words to his agent, the ‘yid’ Shayevich” and threatens to prosecute him. “The Eagle was livid,” recalls a subordinate.

Never having been a civil servant, Zubatov does not mince words and challenges Plehve head on, reminding him that it was he who “legalized” the labor movement in Odessa in the first place. On leaving the room he slams the minister’s door so hard the glass nearly shatters, say witnesses. “I was seething with such burning resentment, the door barely survived,” recalls Zubatov.

He writes a resignation letter, and the next day goes to Moscow. One of the few to see him off at the station is Georgy Gapon. In just a few years he will replay the fate of Genrik Shayevich, but on a far grander scale.

Shayevich is put on trial and sent to Siberia, while the head of the Interior Ministry exiles Zubatov to Vladimir. “To withstand fifteen years of service under the watchful eye of the authorities and be cursed on all sides by one’s enemies, not without risk to life and limb, only to fall under police surveillance oneself is an unprecedented and outrageous injustice,” writes Zubatov in his report to the Interior Ministry. “They say that prayers to God and service to the Tsar shall not go unheeded. My service was indeed to the Tsar, but it ended in foul, unheard-of wrongfulness.”

* About $131,833,333 and $593,250,000 in 2017

* The term used to describe the real opposition to today’s Kremlin.

* In 2014 Kremlin’s chief political strategist Vyacheslav Volodin in his speech during high-profile forum in Sochi will announce his view on new Russian ideology: “There is no Russia without Putin and no Putin without Russia.”

* Knocked down by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and restored in 2005 in a flower garden near the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

* One hundred years later, Zubatov’s tactics will become the main method of fighting political opposition in Russia. In the early twenty-first century real opposition parties do not have a chance of being registered by the Ministry of Justice, so they function illegally and are called “non-systemic opposition.” On the other hand, spoiler parties, created and controlled by the Presidential Administration, get registered. These are called “systemic opposition,” though in fact they are not an opposition at all, they only create an illusion of its existence. One example is the party “A Just Russia,” created by the government to take votes from the Communists.

* About $659 in 2017.

* About $7,580 in 2017.

† About $79,100 in 2017.

* One hundred years later conspiracy theories are not mocked or refuted by officious journalists anymore. In the early twenty-first century conspirology almost becomes state ideology in Russia—belief in a conspiracy against Russian people unites the officials, loyal journalists and most of the public consuming the conspiracy propaganda.

† About $6,592 in 2017.

* In 2014 Russian state owned “First Channel” will make a fake report that Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” had crucified a boy in eastern Ukraine. That story will cause a huge scandal in Russia, but many people will believe it.

* About $396 in 2017.

* Bias and stereotypes are still widespread in the world media in the early twenty-first century: in their coverage of the events in Russia they create a much more black-and-white, primitive, and conspirological picture than the real one.

* In the beginning of twenty-first century Vladimir Putin will demand the extradition of the exiled oligarchs (and his personal foes) from different European countries. But all those appeals will be rejected by European courts: Spanish and Greek judges will prevent Vladimir Gusinsky from being extradited to Russia, and British court will grant refugee status to Boris Berezovsky.